San Francisco Mountains, Part 1

As we pulled out of Alpine, it was time to start looking for a place to camp. We turned down a small Forest Service road looking for a flat place to pull over before continuing down US 180 the next morning. We weren’t having too much luck finding a place to camp.

It was an awesome stroke of luck.

The little road we were driving met up with Blue River Road. Blue River Road reaches deep into the San Francisco Mountains towards Blue, Arizona right at the edge of the Blue Range Primitive Area. The gravel road travels south through the canyon carved by the Blue River. Although the road continues south beyond Blue, since we were headed to New Mexico we took the winding Pueblo Park road to the east.

Since we lack a detailed New Mexico map we weren’t really sure how to plan out the rest of our route but once we made camp, we discovered we had a 3G signal! After playing with CalTopo for awhile we were finally able to make some plans for the Land of Enchantment!

The next morning we headed north along Saddle Mountain Road (FS 209) until we found a side road to explore. We unloaded the quad and set off exploring. Although we didn’t find any antlers, it was a lovely brisk morning to be out hiking! We got some great views of the Blue Range and back towards Arizona’s Mount Baldy.